This weekend, the Four Horsemen announced the acquisition of their first license, The Outer Space Men. The 4H provided some images of the figures in the line and, as usual, amazed us with their work. While we were looking at all the pretty pictures though, we realized we weren’t quite sure what we were looking at. Who were The Outer Space Men? We didn’t have much more than a passing awareness of them, so we hit the books. And what we found out only made the 4H versions more awesome.
In four months, I'm going to be 30 years old. I'm not really worried about it. Things don't feel much different from when I was a kid. The space shuttle is still the primary space vehicle, ketchup still isn't a vegetable, and Clash of the Titans & The Karate Kid are new in theaters. Not everything is the same, more people care about who Jacob is than who shot JR, and of course, there's Pluto (sorry, buddy). As a toy collector, things feel especially the same. I'm still hitting up stores looking for Black Spidey, Desaad, He-Man, and Wreck-Gar. Over the last few years, toy companies have, ingeniously, figured out that I'll buy all my old toys over again if they at least try to make them better. It's an 80s love fest out there. I've been enjoying every minute of it.
Vault snagged an Arisia figure from DC Direct's Blackest Night line on Friday and our discussion turned into a big debate about scale and how DCD and DCUC should or shouldn't share shelf space. Vault's got a mini-review of Arisia on our forums, I've added a handful of "Usual Suspects" shots to his review so we can work out if DCD and DCUC have anything close to a compatible scale, and we've got the whole gang talking about the merits (or nasty side effects) of mixing the lines!
I'm ambivalent on the Mattel/Wal-Mart partnership. I really don't care if they keep getting exclusives or not. I live practically on top of Wal-Mart HQ and have dozens of stores within a reasonable driving distance, but that doesn't make it easy to find the exclusives. I didn't get DCUC5 first hand. I had to buy the Giant Man figures and Nemesis figures while traveling in other states. And I know that even though DCUC10 was easier to find for a lot of fans, the bad taste DCUC5 left in the mouths of most collectors is still fresh enough that even I cringed at the announcement that DCUC14 would also be exclusive to the retailer. But I'm not writing about whether there should or shouldn't be Wal-Mart waves today. That ship has sailed, so I'm moving on too. But I do have a problem with some of the figures that go into Wal-Mart waves.
Last month, the IAT staff sat down and beat out our Jan 15th Mattel questions. We bounced around a few ideas and, like we always do, we got off track. This time talking about Masters of the Universe Classics and the future of the line. Vault had done a little spreadsheet work and came up with a rough estimate of how many figures Mattel would be putting into the line if they fulfilled their 2016 goal including monthlies, quarterly bonuses, convention exclusives, and subscription exclusives. Then he made a list of all the previously released MOTU toys and added in some likely non-Filmation candidates that didn’t get a toy but could be done now. Vault was surprised to find that the numbers turned out to be about the same.
